Meanwhile Apple has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages and everyone decided to ignore that fact. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption
https://support.apple.com/en-us/122234
In fact on this page they still claim iMessage is end-to-end encrypted.
...assuming you have icloud backups enabled, which is... totally expected? What's next, complaining about bitlocker being backdoored because microsoft can read your onedrive files?
What does that even mean? Suppose icloud backups doesn't exist, but you could still take screenshots and save them to icloud drive. Is that also "Apple has always been able to read encrypted iMessage messages"? Same goes for "other people having icloud backups enabled". People can also snitch on you, or get their phones seized. I feel like people like you and the article author are just redefining the threat model of E2EE apps just so they can smugly go "well ackshually..."
It's not hard to understand why Apple uploading every message to themselves to read by default is different from somebody intentionally taking a screenshot of their own phone.
Is icloud backups opt in or opt out? If it's opt in then would your objection still hold?
What would resolve my objection is if Apple either made messages backups E2EE always, as Google did and as Apple does themselves for other data categories like Keychain passwords, or if they excluded E2EE conversations (e.g. from ADP people) from non-E2EE backups, as Telegram does. Anything short of that does not qualify as E2EE regardless of the defaults, and marketing it as E2EE is false advertising.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025 Blind Item #7 The celebrity CEO says his new chat system is so secure that even he can't read the messages. He is lying. He reads them all the time.